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A mostly teenage cast does a great job with the emotional and physical hardships that derive from their hidden burden.

The raucous teenagers onstage seem perfectly normal at first. They’re playing an exuberant game of soccer, laughing and joking and at one point stopping to dance to a Beyoncé song. One is even wearing a Lakers jersey.

But we soon learn that they bear a hidden burden. They’re the offspring of the Hutu men who participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsi were brutally slaughtered. Their impending release 15 years later, and the effect it will have on the children who have long been deprived of their fathers, is the subject of “Children of Killers,” Katori Hall’s (“The Mountaintop,” “Hurt Village”) drama now receiving its American premiere.

The work, originally commissioned by London’s National Theatre, lasts barely an hour, but it packs a punch. It follows a group of teens as they prepare for the return of their fathers. They include 18-year-old Vincent, who has mixed feelings about being reunited with the man known as “The Butcher.”

“No longer will we be the men of the house,” Vincent points out to his friends.

That the ethnic tensions still exist is made clear by the taunting of Esperance, a young Tutsi woman whose arm was chopped off during the genocide, by Bosco, a Hutu.

“When my father comes home you better run,” he tells her. “He will finish what he started.”

Making nightmarish appearances throughout the proceedings are the Gahahamuka, the “silenced,” whose ghostly cries haunt the survivors.

The play is filled with quietly chilling touches, such as when Vincent’s mother prepares for her husband’s return by casually using a machete as a mirror while applying her lipstick.

Director Emily Mendelsohn’s superb staging makes powerful use of projections and shadows to convey the horrors of the past, with Michael Walsh’s sound design adding to the ominous atmosphere. The mostly teenage performers handle their physically and emotionally demanding roles powerfully, with Terrell Wheeler particularly impressive as the conflicted Vincent.

The final scene, in which Vincent Sr. finally makes his appearance, features scant dialogue and lasts just a couple of minutes. But its long pauses speak volumes that you won’t soon forget.